Continuous assessment is a form of educational examination that evaluates a student's progress throughout a prescribed course. It is often used as an alternative to the final examination system.[1] Proponents of continuous assessment argue that the approach allows tracking of progress and has a chance of offering students more support, guidance, and opportunities to improve during the course or programme.[2]
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Continuous assessment can help students learn in the following ways:
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Continuous assessment will often include some form of formative assessment. The formative assessment covers the range of informal diagnostic tests a teacher can use to assist the process of learning by their students. This may include activities such as weekly pop quizzes or preparatory assignments. Prescriptive but ungraded feedback, Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation, likens formative assessment to a cook tasting a soup before serving it to a guest. Despite its advantages, formative assessment can be time-consuming, and incentives in education systems tend to favor more objective assessments.[citation needed]
An advantage of formative assessment for learning is that it is ongoing. This allows for incremental feedback to identify problems at their earliest stages. For example, a student can correct conceptual errors before undertaking work on a term paper. As a student works on a topic, input from the teacher can inform, guide, and validate each step of the process. Cheating and plagiarism remain significant problems in academic settings. Compared to graded summative assessments like final exams, ungraded formative assessments reduce the temptation to cheat. This allows students to focus on learning instead of grades.[4]